GOD_COULDN’T_ABOLISH_BRUTAL_LAWS
Jesus said that the Old Testament was infallible and was God's revelation and his unbreakable word. If Jesus was God, then he made the vicious laws of God given in the Bible that demanded that heretics and homosexuals and whole nations be violently slain by his people.
The Church says that Jesus saved the life of an adulteress in John 6. Some use this story to argue that Jesus did away with the capital punishment laws. There a woman was caught in adultery and hauled before Jesus by a mob who asked Jesus if they should stone her to death. He said that if anybody was without sin let him be the first to cast a stone at her. This certainly says that a sinless accuser could indeed stone her to death. They all walked away and Jesus told the woman to go and sin no more. Some say that he could have stoned her being sinless and he didn't so he didn't agree with stoning women like her though the law commanded stoning for such. But the woman had been hauled before him by a mob not the legal system. Had these people been really concerned for the law they would have had a warrant to stone her. They didn't when they were able to walk away. The story does not teach that capital punishment is wrong. Quite the opposite. It implies that adulterous people should be destroyed but through the proper channels and by fair courts. Jesus and the early Church did not believe that magistrates had to be sinless before they had the right to punish offenders. They punish as representatives of the law not in their personal capacity. They are doing a job.
Indeed Jesus supposedly saved the soul of the thief who was crucified with him because the thief confessed that he deserved the cross. Jesus told him that he would be saved that very day implying that the thief was a saint just for approving of what the evil Romans did to him.
Jesus said that we are commanded to love God with all our hearts - so we should be willing to embrace everlasting torment if God asked us to. Such a severe message makes capital punishment seem such a little thing! We should not be surprised if God asks us to implement it! It is no reply to say that loving God just means keeping his commandments. That would be loving his commandments but we are asked to love God.
No one can deny that capital punishment is evil except when it is the only way to stop a killer killing any more. But then it is not capital punishment but self-defence. To say that capital punishment is always wrong then does not have anything to do with forbidding killing in self-defence.
John Paul II stated that capital punishment is morally right when it is absolutely necessary to destroy someone who will kill others. That is not capital punishment.
God takes life which implies he can authorise us to do it. Belief in God then endangers opposition to
capital punishment. Even if it just
opens up the possibility that there is a being who could reveal that it should be
carried out to promote the belief is to promote murder in its capital punishment
aspect. To refuse to enlighten believers
is to make it more possible for capital punishment to return big time. Believers in God cannot use the only real
reason for rejecting capital punishment, that since
humans should be happy their lives must be worth more than happiness so life is
an absolute value and should never be destroyed. For the sake of men and women, we reject God
as an abomination.
The Bible says that God himself commands capital punishment and records
his words making it clear that heretics, apostates, worshippers of other Gods,
adulterers, women who are not virgins on the wedding night, homosexuals, those
who curse father or mother or God or the priests are to be put to death. He said that these should be put to death by
stoning or burned to death. These commands
were done purely because of
Evil Christian
defender Norman L Geisler in The Case for Faith (Lee Strobel, Zondervan, Grand Rapids,
Michigan, 2000) states that we don’t have the right to take life for we didn’t
create it but God has the right for he created it (page 168). He argued that you can cut down your bushes
in your own garden but nobody else’s because the bushes are yours so God owns
our lives and can take them as he pleases.
He says this in response to those who say that God commanding killing in
the Bible proves it is an evil book and unworthy of belief.
The first reply to Geisler is that to say God has the right to command us to
take life for life is his to take is to say that men have the right to kill if
belief in God bids them to. That is what
it amounts to. In the Bible, the prophet
Samuel gave
The second reply to Geisler is that making life does not give you the right to
destroy it when you want. Even if you
made it, the life doesn’t belong to you but to the being that you gave life
to. We are not like mere bushes we are
people. Making life gives God no
authority to take it away. To say that
your life doesn’t belong to you is to say you have no rights over it. This is the demeaning implication of belief
in God for people like Geisler have no other excuse
for explaining how God can have the right to command killing or kill.
The third reply to Geisler is that atheists then must claim the right to kill
their children since they must believe they make life. So for God to have the right to kill we must
give it to atheists too!
The fourth reply to Geisler is that human life comes before religious beliefs
and if God endangers respect for human life he shouldn’t be believed in. Geisler stoops so low as to say that when God commanded the
extermination of the Amalekite children and babies
that he was doing them a favour for babies that die go to Heaven (page 169, The Case for Faith). So killing babies to save them isn’t
intrinsically wrong.
The fifth reply to Geisler is that some believers are convinced that God
speaks to them and doctrines such as his only encourage them to think God may
want them to kill. There are thousands
of such deaths every year.
Finally he says that
the people of Amalek were totally evil unlike any
nation today so you can’t assume that we have the right to attack any nation to
rid the earth of its evil. He says God
was right to get Israel to destroy them for they had four hundred years to
repent and never bothered and they would have destroyed Israel. He doesn’t tell us that Israel considered
itself the people of God and didn’t make any effort to convert other
nations. He doesn’t tell us that the Bible
never says the people of Amalek were that bad. And he doesn’t tell us that it is wrong to
destroy another nation entirely on the basis that it would destroy yours for it
might never do it and the people of Amalek had
hundreds of years to attempt to destroy Israel and didn’t. And when
Some believers will object to capital punishment on the grounds that God
said, “You shall not kill”, which proves nothing for it was said in the context
of a book that commanded capital punishment of the worst kind for nearly
everything so “You shall not kill”, just means don’t murder. The other killings were believed to be not
murder because they were God’s will. The
word murder means illegal killing. The
commandment actually supports capital punishment for it does not say you shall
not kill but you shall not murder and what murder is or is not is spelled out
in the rest of the law of which it claims to be a part. The law is a unit and the context of the
commandment shows it was not an absolute ban on taking life. How Christians can quote that command today
and ignore the implicit approval in it for the capital punishment laws of the
Bible shows either lack of thought or hypocrisy.
The fact that capital punishment has been abused and mistakes made like
executing the wrong person do not prove that it is wrong. It only proves it should only be employed
when absolutely certain. The Bible God
advocated capital punishment on very little testimony and gave no rules for
testing a testimony so to even say you need to be totally sure before you can
put a person to death is heresy.
Religion has to go for the sake of the lives of murderers. There is a real danger that the law might at
some stage accept only “God fearing” Christians or whatever into juries on the
grounds that they are holier than the rest of us. The godly alone were counted as valid
witnesses under the Jewish law so they have the scriptural backing.
The doctrine that death is our come-uppance for sinning is official
Church doctrine. (And you will find it
supported in the following references: Handbook
of Christian Apologetics page 247/Radio Replies
Volume 3, Question 675/Catechism of the Catholic Church,
402).
St Paul, whose
writings are infallible sources of doctrine for all Christians, wrote that all
mankind is sinful and that is why all mankind dies. He answered, in his letter to the Romans (5:12),
those who doubted that all people are sinners by reminding them that all die
and that babies die because they are born in a state of separation from God on
account of the sin Adam (their representative and the representative of all
humanity) committed. So God has
sentenced everybody to death because of sin.
Even Jesus
supposedly had to die because he took the guilt of humanity on his innocent
self. This forbids Christians to rule
out capital punishment unless they can prove that God said he will do it
himself from now on – which he never clearly said. Had he intended to he would have stated it
unmistakeably. And again if capital
punishment is right and we forgo it over God that is still fanaticism. It is still fanaticism but less serious if
capital punishment is wrong because we are against it because of God and not
the reason that it is wrong then that is vicious and arrogant. It means that we will refrain from capital punishment
not for people but for religious belief.
That is still fanaticism. It means
that one cannot object to people having a religious belief that commands them
to murder. If you cannot condemn them
for hurting people then there is nothing more to be said.
The argument that
Jesus’ paying the death penalty for us means we don’t pay and the law should
not make us even if we commit murder is a complete laughing stock. The law of the land can’t ban capital
punishment just because of Jesus. The
law has to be secular and practical.
Nobody believes that Jesus’ suffering for sin means that we can rob
banks and not be entitled to punishment so why should capital punishment be any
different?
God has no need
for death and must only inflict it as a punishment for sin. He could call people into an elevator that
takes them to Heaven when their time is right instead. People find the suggestion that death is
punishment for sin distasteful. God must
want us to gloat about death for when he punishes with it he ignores the good a
person may have done. The good doctor
who saves loads of lives could be treated worse than the cold-blooded
murderer. This tells us that God’s
punishing is focused on the evil that a person has done instead of the
good. Belief in God certainly reduces
the revulsion we should feel towards death and considering the value of the
person as being of supreme importance the belief has to be dropped. Even a miniscule of reduction is too much
considering the dignity of the person.
Since death is
punishment it must be vulgar and indecent and unfair and sinful to mourn the
dead or to care when anybody is murdered.
The true believer will only care about the fact that the murderer
committed the crime and killed the person instead of leaving God to do it and
not about the actual murder or death itself.
All will bother him is that God’s toes were tread upon or that the
murderer had a sinful attitude.
To say that death
is a punishment for sin is to insult us all because it means that though one
might mourn for the death of a loved one, one still believes the person
deserved it and withholds some or much sympathy. The death is willed and condoned. Even when it is a needless death this is true
for you may disapprove of the timing of the death but still you see the death
as punishment. Or one can partly condone
what God has done in sending death which is bad too. It means you will and condone the evil
because of God to the extent that you see the death as punishment. You are willing evil on a person all because
of a being you know nothing about and that is totally vile.
To say that God
is right to kill is to automatically affirm that God should be loved with all
the heart and soul and mind and any good you do for others is really done for
his pleasing and not for them at all. It
shows that the prayer, “All for thee my God, all for thee”, is a logical
follow-on from theism. Therefore to
believe in God is to say that nobody else should mean anything to you but him
and that is diabolically harmful and seeks to destroy the joy in life and make
a debt of death. The wife wants her
husband to hold her and love her for herself and not for God and who in their
right mind would want anybody that fails to do this?
Even if belief in God posed only a slight threat to the preservation of
life it would have to go for life is absolutely valuable. It is foolish to say life comes first if
pro-death attitudes in any form or to even the slightest degree are going to be
fostered so they have to be eradicated.
Anyone who loves God insults my life and I will take it personally. Life is so important that every little evil
we do or tolerate when we could correct it contributes to making some people
commit suicide for evil breeds evil. If
you love life then hate belief in God.
The argument against murder is that since persons ought to be made happy
they must be more valuable than anything else for happiness cannot be more
valuable than life when you have to have life to be happy. Belief in God implies that this is
wrong. If you believe in God then God is
the only thing that matters so the only thing that is wrong is whatever he
forbids. So we are not to condemn murder
because of the argument but because we think God forbids murder!
So the reason that proves that murder is wrong has to be done away with
or forgotten. In its place you use a
belief not a proof namely the existence of God.
You would feel better about yourself if you believed murder was wrong
because of the argument of the value of life rather than because God forbids
murder. God then weakens the case
against murder. Anything or anyone who
does that is evil. If God wants you to
believe in him then you have to agree that he can’t object then if you want to
commit murder especially if it is for him.
So God implies the argument against murder because of the value of life
is wrong. In other words, God is
implying that human life does not matter even if he wants it preserved for all
that matters is not life but what he wants to be done with it. God makes you a murderer in your heart.
If the argument is wrong then we are wrong to think that” persons are more
important than happiness for persons should be happy”. The argument being wrong would mean that
persons should not be happy. If persons
are not valuable then persons should not be happy. Let me explain that again. The argument for human life being so precious
is based on the view that happiness is good.
If the argument is wrong then happiness is sinful. God disapproves of it.
Even the worst sinner should be happy for the worst sinner has a right to
live. God then being all-powerful has no
right not to give people a longer life-span and better health assuming there is
some reason he cannot make it all perfect.
To praise the ways of the Lord is to praise the evil he lets
happen. It defies the principle that all
should be happy. We have to hurt people
out of necessity – for example, when we jail criminals – for we are not
all-powerful but God has no excuse. To
praise God is to praise a murderer and to soften your heart towards committing
this crime.
If there is a God or an afterlife the argument that murder is wrong
because of the value of life cannot be right.
If God exists and he is good then killing is right for it is his responsibility
if we kill. He empowers us to kill. Even if you say God cannot take away the strength
in our arm every time we are about to stab someone, you end up saying that
human life isn’t very important. It isn’t
as important as keeping the strength in our arms. That is unfeeling.
Murder cannot be bad if we live on.
If altruism, is the true ethical philosophy (that we should do good
ensuring that there is nothing at all in it for ourselves), then we are not
supposed to do anything for a reward. So
it is best for us if we never get one because it makes no sense to say that you
should not will what you should get.
From this it follows that far from wishing people would live a long time
we must wish they would die quicker and lose all they have worked for. If God loves the sinner but hates the sin
like religion falsely claims then why does he admit that death is a terrible
thing and the extreme evil in his Bible and that it should not exist and then
let people die? It must be punishment
when even he views it as being something horrendous and unspeakable. It must be punishment when he lets us kill
but never lets us lie or commit fornication.
When God wants the law of the land to scare us off committing murder and
to force us not to commit it then he wouldn’t give us the ability to kill. Even if a force field miraculously appeared
to prevent say a bullet entering a brain or heart for a second that would be no
problem for us or him at all. But this
force field does not exist. Therefore
God must want us to commit murder. He
must hate the law of the land. He is
accused by many of being the hypocrite of hypocrites. We have to hate ourselves by being glad that
we will die if we are stabbed for if we do not consent to God letting us be
murdered it’s blasphemy.
Death is God’s revenge more than a divine punishment for if we are not
allowed to kill one another because human life is so precious and absolutely
valuable then God cannot kill us either.
If he kills he does it because he hates us. You only take life to save more lives and
that cannot be the case with God. God is
pure evil. To praise him is an
abomination.
For the same reason, murder cannot be denounced because of the
unhappiness it engenders. People should
be happy that the person has gone to a better place. If they trusted God they would be happy that
people die for they go to the hands of God who always does what is best.
The only way the notion that murder is not sinful can be abolished is by
declaring that since we are more certain that a person who we can see or hear
or touch exists than God or Heaven we should not kill for our religious
beliefs. This however was rejected by
Jesus and the Bible and the Catholic Church which all expect their speculations
to be accepted as certainties. They all
explicitly teach that God can delegate the right to kill to us. Once you believe in God you are saying that
is possible and you cannot condemn any prophet who comes along saying God wants
us to kill just because he says that.
If God stands for the legitimacy of murder then it follows that lying or
theft or cruelty are all perfectly okay and only vicious hypocrites are opposed
to them for they are less bad.
Nobody accepts the Christian doctrine that murder is not wrong in itself but
only wrong because the victim is God’s property anymore.
St Thomas Aquinas who is the main bedrock of the Roman Catholic Church
stated that killing a person is bad for the same reason as killing a slave
owner’s slave is bad (page 89, Practical Ethics). If that is true then it follows that it is
not bad to kill anybody because God is all-powerful and does not need
slaves.
The importance of the traditional doctrine was if anybody claimed to be
an Atheist or that God’s existence could not be satisfactorily proved that the
Church and its pawn the state could claim to have a right to eliminate that
person on the basis that the person was denying the only thing that could make
it wrong to murder and was therefore by definition an anarchist. To create an “ethical” scheme like this that
makes the value of people depend on a hypothesis, God, that is so obviously
wrong that only ignorant people or people who just are so prejudiced that they
will believe what suits them will support it is terrible. People have to come before theories and
theologies. Since it is religious
leaders who have to decide and tell the people what God’s will is, the power to
command the destruction of threats to their power in the name of God is placed
in their hands for they can say God wants his rebellious property killed and
this should be done for they are his property.
Since the leaders represent God it follows that they have the right to
use the people as God would use them for they stand in the place of God. They have the right to make slaves of the
people.
If
there is a God or an afterlife this argument cannot be right. If God exists and he is good then killing is
right for it is his fault if we kill and so does he. And murder cannot be bad if we live on.
If
it is bad because it hurts the victim then painless methods must be used. But if God exists suffering is a call to
offer it as a sacrifice of love and if a person is hurt and resents it that is
not the killer’s own fault and is not a reason for condemning him or her.
For
the same reason, murder cannot be denounced because of the unhappiness it
engenders. People should be happy that
the person has gone to a better place.
The
only way the notion that murder is not sinful can be abolished is by declaring
that since we are more certain that a person we can see or hear or touch exists
than God or Heaven we should not kill for our religious beliefs. This however was rejected by Jesus and the
Bible and the Catholic Church which all expect their ravings to be accepted as
certainties.
If
murder is wrong then there is no God.
Belief in God is a bad omen for those who aim
to work to promote respect for human life.
If you hate the sin, you hate the sinner for the same reason as not trusting John’s actions is the same as not trusting John. The Bible God says he hates sin and will punish it. To hate sin at all is to want to punish it with your anger and disapproval. Hate is a form of punishment and if it can't punish it settles for wanting to punish.
God in the Bible hated sin so much that he demanded that grave sinners be put to death by his people. It is obvious that God commanded these cruelties out of hatred for sinners. It’s just honesty to admit that though Christianity, Judaism and Islam don’t seem able to have that concept. If hatred is legitimate and God commanded that gays be stoned to death because he hated them and we should hate them too then even God can’t change that command. He might be able to let us burn them slowly to death or something but the principle that they must die in agony cannot be altered.
Secrets of
Romanism
page 150 says, “God’s law was not abrogated; it can never be abrogated. Because we are not under the Law, but under
Grace, we cannot disregard God’s Law; we are only free from the penalty of the
Old Law. All that Romans 8:1,2 says is
that the believer is not under the penalty of the Law (Hebrews
We know that the God of the Torah is in all
honesty terrifying for several of his
laws are something that only wild brutes could live by. They prescribe horrible punishments. God was not the head of state but its lawyer
and he made cruel laws for his representatives to enforce. Even the New Testament states that once a
person was accused by two witnesses of being guilty of a capital crime the
person was stoned to death without mercy (Hebrews 10:28,29). It states that the person deserves it for if
he deserved to die like that it says that who disparage the grace of God deserve
to suffer and die far more (v29).
Could God
repeal any of his cruel regulations in the Law?
Briefly he couldn’t for he said the Law was everlasting meaning it was
for all times and places for he never hinted of any non-literal interpretation so
when he commanded the stoning of adulterers he wanted it to be done forever and
never spelled out what circumstances did or didn’t justify the carrying out of
that law or gave any hint that a different punishment could be decided upon. Let’s answer this complicated question in a
dialogue. Incidentally, even the
anti-war Christadelphians admit that nothing in the Bible expressly prohibits
military service (page 6, The Christian and War, J B Norris).
A: CRIMINALS HAD TO BE PUNISHED AND SINCE ISRAEL WAS
WANDERING IN THE DESERT IT WAS FORCED TO EXECUTE THEM BY STONING THEM TO DEATH
AND DO ALL THE OTHER TERRIBLE THINGS JUST FOR HANDINESS AND BECAUSE THERE WAS
NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH THEM FOR THE JOURNEY CAME FIRST. ONCE THEY SETTLED IN THEIR LAND THEY DIDN’T
NEED TO KEEP THE LAWS ANY MORE. AND
NEITHER DO WE.
REPLY: This is false for the same laws were
promulgated as valid by God long after
The
argument infers that if we are wanderers then we are to keep the laws.
A: THE
EXECUTED DESERVED TO DIE. ALL WHO
SUFFERED BY THE LAW DESERVED TO. THEY
WERE PUT TO DEATH BECAUSE IT WAS JUST.
NOW GOD PREFERS TO KILL THEM HIMSELF FOR HE KNOWS WHEN TO BRING ABOUT
WHAT IS BEST. THE LAWS ARE STILL IN
POWER BUT IT IS NOT OUR JOB TO KEEP THEM ANYMORE. WE ARE NOT BREAKING THEM BY NOT OBSERVING
THEM.
REPLY: God could do this. But he doesn’t pay back wrong for wrong but
forgives so he has not reserved the privilege of being cruel to himself so it
is our job to kill. When he enacted the
capital laws which would led to many dying unrepentant and going to Hell he
made it right to send people there. If
he retains the privilege to slaughter to himself now to prevent souls being
damned then he must have commanded wrong before. If he was right the first time he cannot change.
Scripture
says we merely have to leave vengeance to God in non-legal affairs. See Romans 12, 13. It never says that God will administer all
the retribution himself from now on. He
is evil if it does for he should always have done it himself for leaving it to
us has meant that many innocent people have suffered and died. The Bible says that God wants the law of the
land respected for it punishes people (Romans 13) obviously showing that God is
not going to do it all.
In Acts
25:11, Paul defended the Roman laws right to put him to death if he committed a
capital crime. He said he would not
refuse to die then meaning he would approve of his death. Because he was talking to people who would
execute him if he wanted it or not he was not giving them a possibly grudging
permission to slaughter him but telling them they would be right. He does not specify what crimes he would
approve being legally murdered for so he certainly agrees that murder alone is
not a capital crime there are more capital crimes than that and the law of the
land has the right to decide what else to apply capital punishment for. This was after the Law of Moses was
supposedly abrogated according to the lies of liberal Christians.
B: IT WAS WORSE TO SIN THEN THAN IT IS NOW. GOD HAS MADE SIN LESS SERIOUS SO IT NO LONGER
MERITS BEING PUT TO DEATH OR SEVERE LEGAL PUNISHMENT.
REPLY: God cannot change good and evil if they
really exist. Sin is supposed to be
worse not better since Jesus came with his salvation and his enlightening
gospel for we know better now. Read Hebrews 10 which says that sin is now worse
than it was before Jesus was heard of.
C: THE
CRIMINALS HAD TO BE KILLED BECAUSE THEY ASKED FOR IT. RULES ABOUT WHAT WE WILL BRING ON OURSELVES
BY BREAKING THEM CAN BE CHANGED.
REPLY: Asking for trouble does not mean that it is
right to receive it. It is unjust to
kill anybody that asks to be killed. It
is unjust to cut the hand off a woman who grabs a man and God commanded that
presumably because he believed she asked for it. If the objection is valid then it follows
that we can restore the Jewish Law if we want to for the Law is always just for
if people are put to death for missing Mass on Sunday they have nobody to blame
but themselves.
D: THE
RULES WERE CIVIL LAWS AND WE CAN CHANGE CIVIL LAWS.
REPLY: It is a mistake to assume that the execution
laws were civil or political laws. The
Bible never says that they are. We have
no right to assume then God could abrogate them. Even if they were civil laws God made them so
they are the wisest laws ever and we should move our civil law as close to them
as possible. If we cannot stone gays to
death we can put them jail forever. When
God tried to keep
E: THE BLOOD
LETTING WAS DONE TO DETER OTHERS FROM FOLLOWING THE EXAMPLE OF THE
CRIMINALS. GOD CAN CHANGE HIS METHODS OF
DETERRENCE.
REPLY: God could never abolish his draconian laws
when they are for this because it would mean being against deterrence now. Some might see the mere threat of vengeance
from God as deterrence enough. If it
were then he wouldn’t have made those laws.
And how could it be enough when there is forgiveness?
Deterrence
never works to a large extent. It often makes
the criminals craftier and more secretive.
It boosts the number of people who are happy to cover up for crime and
protect the criminals. Though deterrence
is a part of the need for making people pay for crime it can only have a small
part. To give it too much importance is
dangerous. The Torah rejects the idea
that it was just about deterrence. It
says that in the case of homosexuals caught together that both have to be
killed, to use one example out of many, to purge the evil from the midst of the
people and that their blood is upon them meaning they deserve to die. Christians have tried to make out that
capital punishment is the state practicing self-defence (page 351, Moral
Philosophy) which is total lunacy.
If the bloodletting under Moses was motivated by deterrence and the Law
says it was a main motive then we need it more today than ever.
Jesus
forbade anything that might encourage sin so if the Torah’s capital laws were
about deterrence then he hinted that they bear full force even in our times.
To say the
Law of God through Moses authorises deterrence is to imply that it could be
right to crucify a man for shoplifting.
F: THE EXECUTIONS WERE RIGHT FOR GOD WAS THE
HEAD OF THE STATE OF
REPLY: High treason is doing great damage to your
country and government.
The sins
did not do God any harm for he was all-powerful. Could two men buggering one another the once
really do God or the community any harm?
Of course not. This argument is
just one of the callous excuses Christians make for their God. If they cared about people they would not
speak until they were dead sure they were right.
They would
then try to tell you that the treason was harming others by bad example and
scandal. This means the argument is
really the deterrence one that we have already refuted for God had to get harsh
to correct the danger of scandal. Now,
how could adultery or homosexuality be a bad example when it was punished so
severely? How could it be a scandal that
corrupts others? In fact it was
preventing scandal. And who was it that
decreed the people should all know about these sins and be scandalised? He said these sins were everybody else’s
business for the sinners should be hauled out and stoned by the people so the
people had a right to know. Even if
Christians believe that the cruel laws are a thing of the past they must admit
there was no need for the people to know what sin the person they killed was
guilty of which implies that God says that whatever sins you commit are the
Church’s business and they can come around shouting the odds and ordering you
not to masturbate or whatever other sin they are in a frizzy about. If God made the laws to avert scandal then
clearly the laws cannot ever go out of force.
And what about the scandal of God getting religious leaders to put people
to death so savagely? Harsh punishment
is far worse than the scandal of adultery or homosexuality.
Whatever
it is treason or not, a person has committed they should not be executed so
cruelly. They should not be put to death
at all even if they do deserve it. There
were other ways to deal with them.
High
treason was not the reason for all this murdering for all sin is high treason -
being infinitely insulting to the infinite love of God who is the rightful
ruler of the universe – and not all sin was punished by stoning to death so
none needed to be punished that way.
There was just no need for all executions. And we have seen how many innocent people
have been executed in our day after having been found guilty of a murder they
never committed and the Law of Moses prescribes a cruel death for a lot more
crimes than murder. It is ridiculous to
say that we must only kill those who the Law wants dead within the state law
when the Law does not seem to be right to our way of thinking for it deepens
the risk of good people being executed.
God does not care who we kill as long as we made some effort to be sure
they were guilty. A bit is enough. If God cared very little when he did not
spell out the procedures for making sure a person is guilty in the Law. When the Law is like that how could it be a
serious offence if an offence at all to kill the people in a different country
that forbids such killings?
Suppose
In Exodus
Some argue
that the fact that the Israelites were obliged to have such laws does not infer
that modern lands must do the same for
If the
perfect God once created a theocracy then every country should be one for the
perfect only does what is perfect.
To assert
that the capital crimes of the Law should be penalised by death no longer for
they aren’t high treason anymore is wrong for God claims to be the rightful
ruler of the world. What can one expect
if he is omnipotent and its maker? The
world is meant to be a theocracy – no it is a theocracy though it doesn’t know
it. Countries that claim they are not
are theocracies that have not recognised the rights of God to rule them.
Countries
that are not called theocracies are real theocracies for he is the origin and
maker of all wise laws.
God
expects to be put first all the time (Matthew
The Old
Testament never denies that Israelites should observe the Mosiac Law wherever
they go out of the land ruled by God. It
affirms it.
It is a
well-known principle that a law permits what it does not forbid and it doesn’t
forbid anyone to keep the Law or erect another theocracy if that was what
If
adultery and the other capital crimes are treason against God then they are
also treason against any ethical human ruler such as the president. They must deserve the same penalty. The Law never says that the crimes are
treason. It does say the purpose of the
rules is that the people may fear to commit the sin and may purge the evil from
their midst and that the victims deserve it for they knew what would come if
they were caught. That is the meaning of
the expressions, “ye shall purge the evil from your midst” and “their own blood
is upon them”. The reference to purging
indicates that nothing should be done that would allow such situations to take
place. Men are not to be left alone with
married women and men who are gay have to be compelled to avoid friendships
with other men. Everything that can be
done has to be done to discourage sin.
For example, a practicing gay will find it easier to maintain his
lifestyle if he can get a job somewhere so he has to be forced to be
unemployed. Purging carries connotations
of making clean and there is no way that law could have been done away. Any Christian who does not live by the strict
and repressive code of morality implied by the Law is unworthy of the name.
Think about
the argument that the capital laws were right for the time when
Besides
some say, God ruled the world not just
God
commanded all the killing in
G: GOD HATED
THE PERSON PUNISHED UNDER THE LAW OF MOSES BUT HE HAS STOPPED HATING THEM NOW
SO WE MUST NOT KEEP THE PUNITIVE PRECEPTS.
REPLY: God did hate them for he had no decent reason
for having them slaughtered. But the
Bible forbids this belief for it says that the Law is love. Presumably, it means that God hates not
because hate is good by itself but because hate is good under the circumstances
and it would be unloving of him to refrain from it. The Law was love according to the warped and
superstitious ideas about love rife at that time which saw cruel murders as
love for God’s morality was above reason.
The latter is the proper understanding.
It is
either perfect or imperfect to hate. So
if God is perfect he cannot start loving who he used to hate. Both the Old and New Testaments state that
God does not change (Numbers
H: GOD MADE THE EXECUTION LAWS FOR A MYSTERIOUS
PURPOSE THAT WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND. THEY
ARE ABROGATED NOW FOR THE CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE CHANGED.
REPLY: This contradicts the claim of the Torah to be
wise in the eyes of the world (Deuteronomy 4:6,8). This tells us that the Torah is the
reflection and expression of God’s own holiness and wisdom so it has to be
relevant to other nations too for it is morality it proclaims (page 12, Not
Under Law).
If this
reason were right then nobody would know if it were right or not for it is a
puzzle to finite minds that cannot be solved in this world.
If the
Almighty is perfect like the Bible teaches then if he tells us to cast rocks at
idolaters and the rest to snuff out their lives that is the perfect thing to do
and he can’t change his mind without becoming imperfect. The Lord did not and could not change his
Law.
Some say
that God had to be rigidly strict so that
If God is
sensible he will want us to forget this purpose stuff and hold that stoning of
mediums and blasphemers to death is right in itself and not because of any good
consequences. He said the stoning to
death was to purge the evil out of the midst of the people – he wanted the evil
people dead and was not just interested in stopping them for that could be done
without killing them. The mysterious
purpose suggestion is heretical.
I: GOD MADE
THE LAWS TO BE KEPT WHEN IT MADE SENSE TO LIVE THEM, THE OBLIGATION TO OBEY
DEPENDED ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES. HE WAS
NOT SAYING THAT THE HEBREWS HAD TO KILL ALL ADULTERERS OR WHATEVER. IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE FOR US TO OBSERVE THEM
NOW FOR TIMES HAVE CHANGED.
REPLY: The
fact that the conditions are not laid down disproves this. And God forbade hurting people over what
might never happen and since he says it is bad for capital criminals to live he
is telling us we can’t let them live over what might never happen.
Some
people have got it into their heads that God could never have made such laws in
the first place. Dreadful! Since God creates life and takes it, it
follows that God can authorise a person to take the life of another. God lets people get hurt so it follows he can
permit us to do harm for him. The
Christian claptrap about people having no right to execute criminals or to
mutilate them is according to their scriptures just that – claptrap. They can’t even give you a good reason why
their God who kills would not want us to kill.
Genesis
9:6 has God commanding after the flood that if anybody kills a man he is to be
killed in return for man is made in the image of God. So capital punishment was in force before the
Law was set up and if the Law has been abrogated it is still in force for it is
independent of the Law. It is because
God has made man in his own image that murder is so serious so the implication
is that murderers have to be slain because of the insult they offered God by
marring his image. This implicitly but
clearly commands that the state should not be secular but religious and make
the Bible part of its constitution. God
cannot command killing for murdering his image unless it is legal and it can
only be legal to execute murderers for that reason when the state is just the
arm of the Church. The Bible never ever
says that any other reason is enough to execute a murderer. Since marring the image of God is the reason
for capital punishment it follows that idolaters and homosexuals and the other
practitioners of sins that were capital crimes under the Law of Moses are
marring the image of God as well. For
example, to be an idolater would be like trying to cease being the image of God
and would be as nasty as murder.
Homosexuals because they are made in the image of God as men would be
sinning grievously by fusing two images of God together sexually when God made
woman for his image to have sex with.
So by this logic we see that the reason the capital laws were made was
because certain sins were believed to attack and desecrate the divine image and
the price for these sins was death. This
shows the laws cannot be abrogated and the Bible clearly shows that they never
have been.
By the
way, if marring the image of God in yourself is so intolerable that you should
be put to death then a main reason for executing you is to make sure you never
do it again. Therefore you have to be
kept under ball and chain after being found guilty and preferably killed as
soon as possible. The Old Testament is
not against killing the person as soon as the trial is over so it is for it. How do we know this? What a law as tough and strict as the law of
Moses allows it commands. The tougher
the law of the land the more one can take it that what it doesn’t expressly
forbid it allows. To delay the
executions would be too kind for such a brutal body of Law.
God told
Moses that if a man lies with a man it is an abomination and they must be put
to death. The purpose of such treatment
was to purge the evil out of the midst of the people and the sinners are said
to have only themselves to blame for being put to death (Leviticus 20:27) because
it is just what they asked for meaning
it is only fairness to have them executed. To suggest that they had to be slain out of
necessity to protect the weak people from rebellion and deter them and not
because of justice denies the words of God when he said that they have nobody
to blame but themselves. To suggest that
they had to be killed to deter the people is blaming the people not just the
sinners who would not be slain if the people were stronger. Besides, if God had to have homosexuals put
to death so cruelly because they would be a bad example it suggests that
homosexuality can be induced in others and that anybody can become gay. Or it suggests a huge part of society is gay
and needs to be discouraged from practicing.
The Bible
says that kidnappers who steal their fellow Israelite to make a slave of him –
Deuteronomy 24:7 – must be put to death to purge the evil from the midst of the
people. The kidnapper could be easily
prevented from reoffending but the homosexual cannot so the homosexual should
be more eagerly destroyed than the kidnapper and his sin is more
intolerable. Disobedient sons were also
to be slain to purge the evil from the midst of the people – Deuteronomy 21:21. Disobedience to the decision made by the
priests in legal matters from bloodshed or to other injustice must be punished
by death for they must be followed to the letter and any disobedience must be
purged from the midst of the people by putting them to death (Deuteronomy
17:12, 13). This commands that even if the
people are unable for some reason to execute the perverts they must not
tolerate this sin and must not show the homosexual any kindness for the sin is
so bad that it would be unkind to the homosexuals to do anything that lets them
forget their sin. They should be
expelled from your company at the very least and they should not be spoken to
or befriended. Doing this is a kindness
because their sin is so terrible and it is kindness to ourselves for they have
no right to ask for our acceptance and are trying to corrupt us by asking for
it. None of this fits a moving with the
times attitude.
J: PAUL SPOKE ABOUT THE DUTY TO OBEY GOVERNMENTS
(ROMANS 13) AND NEVER MENTIONED THE OLD TESTAMENT LAW. IN 1 CORINTHIANS
But Paul
could not let the Church dabble in politics for it was a persecuted and hated
minority and there would have been no point.
He wanted to start from the bottom and so he wanted to concentrate on
influencing society rather than go in at the deep end into politics. This made perfect sense. And besides the Jewish Law had no real
authority in
Paul commanded in the name of God that we must
support governments and accept them so he would have agreed with supporting a
Jewish state that executed apostates and adulterers and witches and
fortune-tellers by reporting them if you were obliged by the law to. And also by giving the state money to fund
the executions. We conclude that if
godless governments could enact acceptable capital punishment laws how much
more could the Jewish law given by God do it.
The laws would be ethical and unchangeable. Paul is not saying the pagan governments are
always right but he is saying they must always be obeyed. He is saying that obedience comes before
human life.
Conclusion
Obedient Christians must support capital punishment. And not just for murder but for crimes like heresy and homosexuality and many others.
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